


Time Does its Work

by BlueGirl22



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Canon, but I was thinkin about 'em, general deh content warnings, mention of past suicide; discussion of mental illness; etc, oh you might wanna google what ';' tattoos mean if you dk, platonic zoevan with trace amounts of romantic chemistry, roman banks evan & gabi carrubba zoe, title from a deh stage direction I really like, uh bonus points if you can spot the politician and great comet references, well there's not much physical description so picture who you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23526424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueGirl22/pseuds/BlueGirl22
Summary: Another year passes, and Evan and Zoe meet up again. Both emboldened by the time they've had to grow, they cover ground that they felt they couldn't before. Zoe lets herself inquire, and Evan lets himself answer.
Relationships: Evan Hansen & Zoe Murphy
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	Time Does its Work

Evan has no idea how he’s ended up in this cafe, his hands around a cup of green tea, waiting for the seat across from him to spontaneously generate a Zoe Murphy. Well, he _knows_ the actual sequence of events. It started last year, a few weeks after seeing her at the orchard, with him cautiously following her Instagram, and her shortly thereafter following him back. Last week, he sent a DM saying that he’d noticed they were going to be in the same city, and then earlier today he walked over to the Starbucks by his dorm that they’d chosen. But _spiritually_ , he has no idea how he got here.

The thing that freaks him out the most is how entirely non freaked out he feels about seeing her. When they’d last spoken in person, he’d been up for hours the night before, feeling sick about all the ways it could go wrong. He had trouble getting to sleep last night, too, but the sensation was different. His heart races and his hands fidget, but with a positive feeling. He’s excited, not afraid.

Lost in his thoughts and transfixed by the steam rising from his cup, he doesn’t notice the very person he’s waiting for come in and order until the barista calls out, “Zoe! Latte for Zoe!”

He looks up and sees the back of her head as she picks up her drink, then she turns and sees him. She stops for a moment, a wisp of a smile toying at the edges of her lips, then gives a nod and makes her way over.

“Hey there,” she says, sliding into her seat. She’s wearing a dark blue blouse with white embroidery and has her hair pinned out of her face.

“Hi, what’s been up with you?”

“Oh, nothing, essentially. I’m staying with my grandparents for the month, and they’re great, but there’s only so much you can do with two people in their eighties.”

Evan laughs. “Are you in town for anything specific, or just to see them?”

“Mainly to see them, but we’re all seeing a play just before I leave.”

“Oh, that should be nice.”

“Yeah. My nana reads theater reviews obsessively, so she’s sure to have picked out something good. What about you, what are you up to?”

“Trying to make it through finals. You’re lucky, getting out in April.”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Evan smiles. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’d feel better if my roommate didn’t keep waking me up when he comes in in the middle of the night five times a week.”

“You should consider becoming nocturnal,” she says, dryly.

“Mm, thank you, I will.” He keeps a straight face for a moment before giggling a little. 

Once again, Evan’s thrown by how _easy_ this is. He can feel, under the surface, that this isn’t really a normal conversation, but the rest of it is just so nice. They trade college anecdotes back and forth, he lets himself have a sharper tongue than usual, she absentmindedly doodles on her hands and forearms with a little black pen, and they share a muffin. It’s almost normal. Almost. Talking so easily with her reminds him of when they used to go out like this before, and thinking about that puts an edge of strain into everything he says.

“Still keeping up with the guitar?” he asks.

“Oh yeah, always. I get so antsy if I can’t play for a while.” She holds the back of her left hand up to her face to check out a flower she just drew, and Evan gets a clear view of what she’s been up to on the inside of her arm. There’s one pattern repeated a few times, with some variations, up and down her skin: a semicolon. There’s one where the top dot is a heart, another where it’s a little silhouette of a cat’s face, a standard one, etc. 

Zoe catches him looking, and turns her arm around to look. “I’ve been thinking about getting one tattooed. Y’know, for my brother. So I’m trying out some different designs.” When Evan doesn’t respond, she continues, “A semicolon tattoo stands for-”

“No, I know.” Evan looks at the back of his hands, then holds up his right index finger, turning his hand so she can see the part that usually touches his middle finger. Against his dark skin stands an even darker semicolon between his first knuckle and the base of his finger. “Got this a few months ago.”

Zoe cracks a wide smile. “Evan Hansen with _ink?_ What has the world come to?”

He laughs. “My mom had the same reaction when I said I was thinking about it. She checked with our rabbi at home and everything to make sure it was allowed.”

“Wow.” She leans back in her seat. “Aren’t finger tattoos meant to hurt?”

“Oh, _so much_ ,” he sniggers, letting his hand fall back to the table. “I wanted it somewhere discreet and didn’t even think about looking up where’s more sensitive on the body. I didn’t cry, though. I tried really hard not to cry and I didn’t.”

“Well, good job.” The smile slowly dissolves from her face and is replaced by a more somber expression. “Is yours also, um, for Connor? Like how you said about the book list-”

“No, no, it’s…” Evan knows if he answers this, then the conversation will lose its safe feeling. He may not get to talk to her like this again. But he can be open about it, and he doesn’t want to try and misdirect or lie to her. “It’s for me.”

“Oh,” she says. She blinks once or twice and sits up straighter. “Oh,” she says again. She gnaws on her lip for a second, mulling something over, then presses her hands flat on the table. “Fuck it, you know nearly everything about me, I’m gonna pry. Care to elaborate on that?”

“Yep, yep, I figured you were going to ask.” He takes a second to draw up some courage inside. “I never told you how I broke my arm.”

“At the orch-” she stops herself in the middle of the word. “Right, no. I think you said, was it, Ellison State Park?”

“Uh huh.” He takes his words slowly, making an effort to try and keep them casual as possible. “It _was_ actually from falling out of a tree, that was true. Well not really ‘falling’ exactly… The summer before my senior year, I, uh, wasn't doing so well. I felt, I _felt_ , well, terrible. Alone, really. And, well, I was working at Ellison at the time, so one day, I-” he breaks off, toying with the zipper on his jacket. Under his breath, he mutters, “Haha, there is _really_ no nice way to say this.” Then, a little louder, “I tried to kill myself. I climbed up forty feet off the ground and let go of the branch I was holding.”

Zoe’s face keeps its cool expression, but a certain tension sets itself into her jaw. In the cafe, people walk back and forth, clamoring for their afternoon snack. “Are you doing okay now?”

“I think so, yeah. About as okay as I think I ever will.”

She nods her understanding. “Good, that’s good. I’m glad you’re feeling better.” A pause. “I always assumed that you had something mental illness-related going on, because, I guess-”

“Because you’ve met me.”

She laughs and leans her forehead in her hand. “Yeah, essentially. And I thought, _used to_ think, that might have been why you got on better with Connor. Starting from that place of understanding.”

Evan fights back the urge to redirect the conversation. “You were about as right as you could be. That was sort of why I felt, at the beginning, like I had to keep it all going, keep people talking and thinking about him. I got it, in a way, and I wanted to help. That could have been me.”

“That makes sense.” She stares into the lacquered table top. “God, I can still practically recite that letter on command.”

His heart jumps up into his throat. “Please don’t.”

She gives him a reassuring look. “Don’t worry, I won’t. I was just thinking- sorry, I’m about to ask another prying question- that letter sounded like… what we _assumed_ it was… for a reason, didn’t it? That wasn’t a coincidence.”

“I honestly don’t know.” Evan sighs and absentmindedly runs his finger over his tattoo. “I don’t know at all. I didn’t even let myself think about what I tried to do until months afterwards, but it was in the back of my mind all the time, subconsciously, I think. The letter was the closest I came to putting it into words.”

“I think I get what you mean.”

“Right, good.” He looks down into his cup and takes a sip. It’s thoroughly room temperature.

Zoe clears her throat. “That all puts things into perspective a little more.”

“Hm?”

“I’ve spent a lot of the last two years trying to figure out how everything played out, how the whole situation blew up like that. Nothing could really make it make sense. If you were just doing it for kicks, you wouldn’t have started The Connor Project. If you were doing it to be cruel, you wouldn’t have confessed like you did-” she fixes him with a look right into his eyes- “and you wouldn’t have been so good with us. But if you started trying to do it out of empathy, then all that fits together. I always thought that was the case, but it’s good to hear it right from you.”

It strains Evan’s heart to think of her thinking of him, trying to figure out whether his design had been to hurt her. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, about any of it. It’s the least I can do.”

“Thank you. Not now, maybe later, though.”

“Sure, sure.”

Zoe looks at the inside of her arm again. “So,” she starts, “Which design do you like best?”

Evan looks down at what she’s drawn. “Actually, may I?” He picks up the pen she was using and holds it as if about to write.

“Oh, yeah, sure, go ahead.”

He gently puts his fingers on her wrist to keep it steady, and draws another semicolon just at the connection of her arm and her hand. When he’s done, he clicks the pen and puts it back down. This design has a star above the comma shape.

Zoe cranes her arm around to get a proper look at it.

“You did always like stars,” says Evan, softly.

“You’re right, I do. I think we have a winner.” She smiles. “Can I see yours again?”

“Of course.” 

He stretches his hand across the table, and she turns it over to better see. She softly drags her finger over the mark, looking a little lost in thought. She shakes her head, coming back to herself. “Sorry, I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that you voluntarily let someone poke you with a needle and give you a permanent mark.”

“Well, to be fair, I changed my mind about it like seven times on the walk to tattoo parlor.”

Zoe laughs. “That’s more like it.”

He looks at her for a moment before taking on a more serious tone. “I’m glad I got it, though. It makes me feel like I have more ownership over it all, like I don’t have to keep that part of myself buried, since I already wear it on the outside.”

“Well, by the time you next see me, I’ll have one, too.”

“Next time?” Evan asks. He internally winces at how clear the hope is in his voice.

“Yeah, next time,” she says, looking up at him. “Jeez, no need to look so surprised.”

He rapidly tries to neutralize his expression. “Sorry, it’s just, I kinda assumed you were humoring me in coming here. You have every right to hate me.”

“Well, I’m here for a month, remember? You’re the only person under seventy I know in this city.” A pause. “And I _like_ you, Evan. Well, my thoughts on you are a little more complicated than that, but I do like you. I want to stay in touch.”

“Thank you, so do I.” Evan could cry. He picks at his fingernails. “Do you think we’ll ever have a normal conversation?”

She almost speaks, then bites it back. Evan can see there are words written in her eyes, he just wishes he could read them. “I don't know," she says, finally. "Maybe in a few years. Maybe in a few weeks.”

Really, Evan could cry. “That’s fair.”

Zoe’s phone buzzes, and she lights up the screen. “Oh, shit, I have to get going, my nana wants me to go to a screening of some Van Gogh movie.”

“That should be fun!” Evan says in forced cheer.

“Trust me, no it won’t.” Zoe slips off her chair and rolls down her sleeves. “See you, uh, some time next week, probably.”

A warm feeling fills his chest. “See you then.”

“Sweet.” She scuttles off towards the door and is gone.

Evan looks at the tattoo on his finger. He remembers how afraid he was about people being able to see it and get a glimpse at his insides. He remembers pushing through and getting it anyway. It reminds him of the ways life can knit back together. 

He gets up from the table and brings both his and Zoe’s cups over to the trash can in the corner before going out.

Evan knows how he got here.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos/comments/etc appreciated if you're so inclined. as per usual, I'm on tumblr @bisexual-evanhansen for further deh thoughts.


End file.
